HALI – Indigo Sutra

The cultivation of indigo dye across the Indian subcontinent is growing. From 9-12 November last year, an international event on the revival and resurgence of natural indigo—Indigo Sutra—was held in Kolkata. It aimed to ‘create awareness of reviving the cultivation of indigo in Bengal and other places where it had stopped due to political unrest or other reasons and also to encourage the use of natural indigo dyeing using natural methods’. Here, its chief advisor and author of three books on indigo, Jenny Balfour Paul, recounts her experience there, ahead of the making of a Channel 4 news programme on the subject this autumn, which came about as a result.